Second Act

These days, becoming a celebrity is not so hard. What’s more difficult is fashioning yourself into the sort of celebrity you actually want to be. Rise to fame because of a sex tape? Make like Kim Kardashian and sober things up with advocacy for recognition of the Armenian genocide. Acting career fizzling? Follow Gwyneth Paltrow’s lead and launch a feel-good Web site for homemakers.

The reinvention of Nicole Richie, the adopted daughter of Lionel Richie, may have once seemed like a tough sell. She came to the public’s attention on the reality show “The Simple Life,” in which she and Paris Hilton teetered on stilettos around cowpats. By her mid-twenties, Richie had been through rehab and multiple arrests, charged with such infractions as possession of heroin while driving on a suspended license. After a later D.U.I. arrest, she spent eighty-two minutes of a four-day sentence behind bars, before being released, owing to jail overcrowding.

But turn things around she did. In 2008, she unveiled a new persona—radiant mother—when she sold photographs of herself with her newborn, Harlow Winter Kate Madden, to People, reportedly for a million dollars. A son, Sparrow James Midnight Madden, followed. And a career as a fashion designer.

“My entire life has evolved. I’m a woman now—I’m thirty,” Richie said the other day, before she went live on the home-shopping channel QVC to sell her latest line of clothing. On her evolving style: “I always wanted bangs, and my mom said, ‘You are of mixed race, you do not have straight hair, you cannot have bangs.’ Of course, I ended up with curly bangs and I rocked them.”

A hair stylist gave a final fluff to Richie’s blond shag. She was wearing false eyelashes and a turquoise dress from the collection. (“Brimming with romance, this tantalizing tunic boasts a sweetheart neckline, a kiss of velvet trim, and an intoxicating ikat print. Enough to make you swoon.” Retail value, $115; QVC price, $79; available in sizes 0 to 24.) “I love a long sleeve—I love being covered,” she said of the dress, in her case almost certainly a size 0.

Richie, who plays the piano, the violin, and the cello, and one day hopes to release an album, cited classic rock as an influence on her designs. “I’m hugely inspired by the sixties and the seventies,” she said. “I really love the over-all freedom of that time. Clashing didn’t really exist, and there was just this idea of wearing what you wanted to wear because of the way it made you feel instead of the label that was behind it.”

Joe Zee, the creative director of Elle and the host of the Sundance Channel reality show “All on the Line,” which will feature Richie’s QVC collection in its finale, walked into the greenroom in a tight gray three-piece suit. Cameramen followed close behind, recording the pair hugging and professing their mutual admiration.

“I feel like a dad with her; my friends call me Papi Joe,” Zee said after Richie left the room. “When she asked me to come work with her, I was, like, ‘I’m there.’ Because there’s this sort of enigma and stigma about what celebrity designers are. I wanted people to understand that she isn’t just slapping her name on the back of something.”

Downstairs, the QVC set had been transformed to evoke New York City, in honor of Fashion’s Night Out. A real yellow cab was parked at the base of a faux fire escape, next to a Village Voice dispenser. Neon signs flashed “OPEN 24 HOURS” and “ROCK N ROLL.” A subway stop advertised access to the Q, V, C, and, surprisingly, A trains. “Literally, we have rebuilt New York from uptown to midtown to downtown,” Lisa Robertson, the show’s host, said, beaming into the camera.

As Richie’s 10:39 P.M. live airtime neared, Michael Baum, her manager, thought to call Richie’s adoptive mother, Brenda Harvey Richie. He punched Harvey Richie’s number into his phone, and when she picked up he said, “I wanted you to know Nicole is going on QVC tonight!”

“What’s she saying?” Richie asked.

“She’s watching Barack Obama,” Baum whispered. The President had just begun his speech at the Democratic National Convention. “Brenda, it’s like ‘Sophie’s Choice’!” Baum said into the phone, and then, to the room, “Now she’s just yelling, ‘Barack! Barack!’ ” They chatted awhile longer, before he hung up and, turning to Richie, said, “I’m, like, ‘It’s O.K., you can watch both. You’ve got several TVs’—’cause she’s rich!” ♦